Wednesday, September 24, 2008

"Don't let your mind stop you from having a good time. Cuz if there's anything that slows us down, it's all that under the hat." ~Jason Mraz

Mraz relayed this bit of wisdom to the audience the other night when he played at Morongo Casino in Cabazon, CA. It stuck with me because it's one of those tests I'm still failing every time it comes up in my life. Witness a few nights ago: I was out with a new friend and we were trying to get down to the beach but the roads we kept picking didn't have public entrances. He was more than willing to trot across someone's lawn and go down private stairs to get there quicker, but I wanted to go around by a road I knew had a public staircase. He asked me, “What are you afraid of?”

I dunno... cops? Angry property owners? Spilling my latte?

I thought about this a lot on my way home. Is it a good or a bad thing that I don’t like risking getting into trouble (in some situations)? Am I missing out on a lot of experience, or am I being a good citizen? I feel like I’ve had more exceptional life adventures than the average bear, but then I hear of others’ worldliness with realms unfamiliar to me because I was too afraid to go there and I think, “yeah, I am lame and where did this pole come from?”

As with all things I'm sure the answer lies in the balance, but the line is fuzzy and vague and sometimes you only know you’ve crossed it when it’s too late.

Trouble is they broke it already. A 30-ton transformer failed in its duty to power cooling stations that keep the liquid helium at a frosty -459.67 degrees (much like New Jersey in January). Not to worry though, CERN called Hasbro and Hasbro contacted Cybertron. Optimus Prime was sent to deal with it. The magnets were back on the subzero frig by last Friday, but now electricity bills and maintenance schedules seem to be keeping it from actually firing up again until next Spring. Go figure.

I think the research they’re doing is both exciting and dangerous at the same time. It’s like aliens gave us a book of matches and told us to go play in traffic.

If we actually observe the Higgs boson, and can therefore make some solid claims on how massless particles become mass, that would be huge. We haven’t had a major advancement in science of that magnitude since Einstein.

On the other hand, scientists swear they have calculated the math nine ways to Sunday to make sure we’re not going to cause a major catastrophe, but hello… they’re called probabilities for a reason. Probabilities usually encompass a few remote occurrences where side effects may include getting run over by our own sun as our universe is inhaled by God’s bright yellow Dyson. And we all know the Cosmos enjoys a good jokes on the humans.